Representation of generic relationship types in conceptual modeling

Abstract

A generic relationship type is a relationship type that may have several realizations in a domain. Typical examples are IsPartOf, IsMemberOf or Materializes, but there are many others. The use of generic relationship types offers several important benefits. However, the achievement of these benefits requires an adequate representation method of the generic relationship types, and their realizations, in the conceptual schemas. In this paper, we propose two new alternative methods for this representation; we describe the contexts in which one or the other is more appropriate, and show their advantages over the current methods. We also explain the adaptation of the methods to the UML.